


The Making of A Jedi Chef

by AnonymousVow



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Gen, Luke Doesn't Know He Comes From A Deathworld, Luke can cook, Really Luke-centric, Rebel Cooks, Sunshine and Tempered Death, Yoda Can't Cook, expanded headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 05:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14129559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousVow/pseuds/AnonymousVow
Summary: Luke Skywalker is an excellent chef. Not that anyone knows this. Not even Luke himself, really.***A headcanon of mine that got expanded, accidentally, into a fic.





	The Making of A Jedi Chef

Luke Skywalker is an excellent chef.  
  
Not that anyone knows this. Not even Luke himself, really.

***

Luke’s first real memories are of the kitchen. As a small boy he spends most of his days playing on the kitchen-floor, nonchalantly dodging his aunt’s footsteps as she cooks, sews, repairs, balances the books, and generally does her daily duties. The Lars kitchen, narrow and cluttered, is the center of the homestead, Owen drifting in after a long day’s work at the vaporators to find hot food and (depending on the outside temperature and the finicky condition of the cooler units) cold drinks waiting.

When Luke is a little older he begins helping his aunt in the kitchen, and he learns to cook from her. Other Tatooine children, of course, also cling to their mothers’ skirts and stay in the kitchens when small. But Luke is a little more interested in cooking, and a little quicker to learn, and Beru is a better cook than most other women on Tatooine. In fact, had she had access to the resources and spare time that sentients in the Core take for granted, she could very well have become a professional chef. She has an instinctive grasp of spices and heating, an empathy for the wants of a diner, and the creative vision needed for all really good cooking. As it is, she reliably turns out delicious meals with very little to work with

And so, Luke, at a very young age, learns the most important thing - it is possible for him to take food, do things to it, and make it more delicious. This assurance stays with him throughout the years.

***

Most sentients, upon joining the Rebellion, learn to adjust to greater privation. The Rebellion is filled, almost by definition, only by true believers, and the fire of their sincere beliefs is needed to sustain them. They are underdogs, short on time, fuel, resources, allies, personnel, and ships - especially when compared to the gargantuan and well-engineered might of the Imperial Navy.

Not Luke, though. Luke does have to adjust, but to what (to him) feels like ridiculous luxury.

Tiny refresher stalls the size of a closet? “Running water, such decadence!”

Impossible missions requiring split-second timing and inhuman accuracy with minimal back-up? “What, a whole meter of clearance? This is going to be ryshcate, guys, ryshcate.”

Tiny quarters shared with the maximum amount of sentients it can take, tripping over your roommates all the time? “Wow, my own foam-pillow! Is that real fabric? And it’s so clean! It’s so relaxing not to have to check for poisontails in my boots every morning.”

A beat-up and extremely limited number of ships with which to wage war on the armadas of the Empire? “Sweet suns of Tatooine, it still has all its original parts? AND you have replacement parts waiting? You guys are awesome!”

Luke’s sunny disposition is helped by the fact that he really does feel like they have a wealth of resources at hand. And this is a morale-booster to his teammates, but this also engenders a quiet terror in them. If Luke Skywalker thinks _this_ is the lap of luxury, what sort of unimaginable hellhole does he hail from?

And of course, the food.

Most Rebels do acknowledge that they could be worse off. The food tends to be plain, but it is filling and there is a lot of it. Rebel Command knows that well-fed soldiers are good soldiers, and that hunger could fracture the already-makeshift structure of their army. Compared to ships and weapons, getting their hands on food is much easier.

To Luke, who has known several “lean times” on Tatooine, the mess hall is a doorway into paradise.

He takes full advantage of his access to food, and soon “to eat like a Skywalker” becomes a by-word in the Rebellion. His appetite develops into a thing of legends, just like his Death Star run. Rebels still tell of the time he had eaten exactly forty-two plates of spiced ribenes at one sitting, rather then let the cooks throw them out as they neared the expiration date.

There are a few old hands in the Rebellion, veterans of the Clone Wars. Some had worked with the fabled 501st, back when they had been Skywalker’s Troops rather than the nucleus of Vader’s Fist, and they remember the stories of Anakin Skywalker’s legendary appetite as well. They share these stories, and it makes everyone in the Rebellion smile. Luke himself (who hears it as he wolfs down a bowl of tinned greens that everyone else had condemned as ‘ _unbearably bitter_ ’ and ‘ _years past expiration_ ’ and ‘ _I think it’s older than you are, Luke_ ’) grins, as he always does, when he hears of his heroic Jedi-general father, and rededicates himself to his eating.

(A Tatooine slave-boy and a freeborn slave’s son from a poor moisture farm both know the edge of starvation a little too well)

Luke hangs around the mess hall whenever he can. He runs errands, fixes recalcitrant kitchen equipment, takes a turn at chopping root-tubers and shelling etta nuts. He marvels at the wide array (to him) of ingredients, spices and herbs available. As always, he is a little in awe of how much water (so clean and pure, too!) goes into Rebel cooking, and there are times when the sonic dishwashers do not work and they are forced to use hot water to clean the dishes, and he is moved nearly to tears at the sight.

The cooks love him, for his helpfulness, his sweet disposition, and his sincere and effusive appreciation of their work. He is adopted as honorary grandchild by the head cook, and shamelessly uses his position to beg treats whenever he can, and this is taken as adorable and flattering by the cooks. (In contrast, a Green Squad pilot once tries to filch pastries from an extremely limited batch prepared for the higher-ups. The cooks chase him out in rage, and the head cook in particular reminds the entire base why she had been famous in melee combat during the Clone Wars.)

He inspires the cooks. It is noticeable that the quality of the food takes a distinct dip if Skywalker is away too long, and people throng the mess hall whenever he returns, in anticipation of the celebratory meals.

***

In Dagobah, Luke meets, for the first time, a dish he can’t eat. He really can’t. He tries, but vomits Master Yoda’s rootleaf stew into the swamp minutes after he chokes a mouthful down.

Luke takes over the cooking, not out of deference to his aged and venerable Master, but out of simple self-interest.

He has little to work with, especially after becoming used to the (relative) bounty of Rebel kitchens. But he perseveres. His body, after the demands of Jedi training, clamors for sustenance, and he becomes a good swamp-forager.

Yoda encourages this for two reasons. One, because it is an opportunity for Luke to hone his Force skills. Two, because he, too, enjoys Luke’s cooking more than he enjoys his own.

 

***

 

When training is over (when training is temporarily halted so Luke can attend to the necessities of life and not keel over and die and be unable to train - it’s a delicate balance and Yoda pushes it to the maximum, gauging just how much training Luke can undergo before he really must eat/sleep/other frail-human things, weighing it against the time lost if he does pass out, because there is so little time, and Yoda can feel the end approaching, which he does not fear, not after nine hundred years and the last few so dark, but he does fear leaving the universe the way it is, the sense of failure and sorrow and regret and clouded intentions and _Luke must be trained_ ) Luke goes out and trains some more, only he doesn’t quite think of it as training - and, therefore, it is supremely effective.

He casts through the swamp as he had used to cast through the canyons and dunelands of his homeworld, looking for womprats, hunting. He opens himself up to the Force, listens to its promptings, without being quite aware of it, just thinks of it as keeping his eyes open and so the Force surges and fills him, the Force is helping to feed its grandson, Luke drawing on it to fight swamp-beasts and giant razor-toothed eels and cruel-beaked birds, drags their dead bodies back to Yoda’s hut, dodges through the foliage and gathers the plants that look like they are (that the Force tells him are) edible.

When he cooks, the Force is still with him (The Force is always with him, this child of its own, but now more than ever with Yoda focusing and polishing the burning-lens that is Luke’s soul), whispering so very softly at the very back of his mind, not the harsh-bright visions shoved at Luke when the universe heaves with portent or the screaming-insistent drivings of the Force in battle, so Luke doesn’t even hear it, really - more slight indents on his subconscious than anything properly picked up.

But he obeys, nevertheless.

_the meat is done. flip it over._

_cut here and here and here. these parts are poison. now the birdflesh is not poison._

_cut the grayroot smaller. it will stew better._

_in three seconds, the soup will be done. immediately remove it from the fire, but let it rest_.

With the Force cooing in the deep of his mind from the beginning, it hardly registers to Luke when he begins to incorporate the Force in other ways, levitating the precious, precious container of salt (filched from the Rebel mess hall) to his hand, creating a vacuum in the little bowl so the swamp-herb marinade penetrates the monster-eel-meat more quickly, holding the grayroot still as he chops, levitating the little black iron pot at the perfect height over the fire.

The food is more delicious than it has any right to be.

  
***

When Yoda fades away into the Force, there is an unfinished bowl of rootleaf stew cooling near him, a last service for a last Padawan for the last Jedi Master. It is the last pleasure Yoda has permitted himself in his life, and his last regret is not finishing it.

***

Luke never cooks for anyone.

When they’re with the Rebels, the cookstaff are there. Luke might pitch in but he would never be so forward as to take over from sentients with so many more years of experience and training.

When he’s on the field, it’s always for madcap, breakneck-paced missions, and they’re lucky if they have time to gulp down some ration bars. Actually cooking anything is completely out of the question.

Years later, after the Rebels settle down into New Republicans, a good number of Luke’s friends (and not only those from the cookstaff, either) open successful eateries, running the range from a fine-dining restaurant specializing in Nubian cuisine (a particular favorite of both Luke and Leia), to a greasy little hole-in-the-wall that looks fifty years old after being in business for three months, which Luke adores for its fried pobats. Luke’s apartment is, of necessity, very high-security (half because of Imperial assassins, half because of the media) and it would require both paperwork and too many pat-downs and security checks to have guests over. So Luke, quite happily, eats at his friends’ restaurants, usually with a group of fellow Rebs, and all of them having a good time together.

He’s over at his sister’s place at least once every three days. Leia and Han had invested in a commercial-grade cookdroid, one with both Alderaanian and Corellian cuisine software packages uploaded, and it takes care of the cooking. (Both C3PO and R2D2 hold it in contempt.) Luke devours both cuisines and cheerfully assures Han and Leia that Corellian and Alderaanian are among his favorites, and never answers when they demand which one he prefers.

The only time Luke cooks is when it’s for himself.

He doesn’t really think of himself as a cook. What he is, is an eater. It just so happens that, all other considerations aside, one of the easiest ways to fill himself up is to buy a mountain of groceries and then chop/baste/fry/roast/stew/cream/mix it into a mountain of edibles.

And so it goes, Luke famous for his eating, not his cooking, until....

...but that’s another story.

**Author's Note:**

> Draws on "Luke is sunshine and tempered death" and "he doesn't know he came from Death World Tatooine" posts on Tumblr. 
> 
> Yoda's rootleaf stew is canon! And from Wookiepedia; "In an unusual promotional campaign for the Empire Strikes Back radio dramatization, National Public Radio hired Craig Claiborne, a renowned chef and food critic, to create a version of rootleaf stew that could be made with ingredients originating from Earth. The recipe was published in newspapers and magazines across the United States." 
> 
> Trying to decide if I want to set a continuation in Legends or Disney canon. If Legends, it's the Solo kids and/or Mara Jade finding out. If Disney, it's Rey.


End file.
